Instapaper Redesigns. Turns into a Destination Site for Must Read Content.

Instapaper, everyone’s favorite “I’ll read it later” tool had a bit of redesign which sees it turn into a destination site in its own right, and – although a little early to say – potentially an archive of wonderful articles.

The homepage has been given a revamp reflecting an almost Economist like layout with excerpts of stories each with their own “read later” button.

The homepage, or “browse”, is divided into two distinct sections, recommended content, and “Greatest Hits”.

Update from Marco Arment (founder and Tumblr’s lead developer in fact):

The new “Browse” frontpage sections are the integration of Instapaper’s sister site, Give Me Something To Read, into the main site (finally). I don’t believe much in algorithmic content recommendations, so it’s human-edited by a guy with really good taste.

I must admit to being a little disappointed that there is no use of algorithms to decide placement on the homepage. With the popularity of the service and the number of articles being bookmarked, it seems like the perfect opportunity to provide personalised quality articles to its users rather than simply offering what the best of someone’s “good taste”.

That said, it’s good to see Instapaper explore other directions from what initially begun as just a simple quick and very basic way to save articles you wanted to read later. The good news is that Instapaper maintains its simplicity (as you would expect from Marco Arment, also Tumblr’s lead developer) but opens up an entirely new way to use the service.

Regarding mobile access, the site and all of its new features work perfectly well on mobile web browsers. As for the iPhone native apps, the recommended-content section isn’t supported by Instapaper Free, but it’s already supported in Instapaper Pro as a feed folder of Give Me Something To Read.

Over the next few updates, Arment says he’ll do my best to synchronize the naming between the various products.